Monday, May 30, 2011

Millions of Hospital Stays Due to Adverse Drug Reactions

An article in American Medical News (May 9, 2011) stated that, in 2008, there were more than 2.7 million hospital stays and emergency room visits due to adverse drug reactions. That is a lot of people harmed by prescription drugs and that is a lot of health care dollars being spent. With all this talk of Obama-care and how to save money in health care, I say start with the drugs. Americans take too many prescription medications that offer little benefit.

I have written extensively about this in my book, Drugs That Don’t Work and Natural Therapies that Do. Big Pharma would have you believe that there is a pill for everything that ails you. However, nothing could be farther from the truth. Nearly all of the patented medications promoted by Big Pharma block receptors or poison enzymes in the body. I can guarantee you, for the long-term, it is not a good idea to block receptors or poison enzymes.

What can you do? Avoid prescription medications if you can. Clean up your diet and exercise more. Make sure that you maintain good hydration. These simple ideas can help you avoid becoming sick and being prescribe medications.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Low Salt Diet Increases Death Rate Over 500%

An article in The Journal of The American Medical Association (May 4, 2011. Vol. 305, N. 17) looked at the influence dietary salt had in cardiovascular disease. The authors studied 3681 subjects for a median of 7.9 years. What the researchers found made headlines in major newspapers.

The scientists reported that there was a direct, inverse linear correlation between the amount of salt ingested and the rate of cardiovascular deaths. What that means is that as salt intake went up, cardiovascular deaths went down. They stratified the subjects into three groups; a low, medium and high salt intake group. The death rates declined as the subjects ate more salt: from 4.1% in the lowest group to 1.9% in the medium group and 0.8% in the highest group.

For those who have read my book, Salt Your Way to Health, there really wasn’t anything new in this study. However, the media (at MSNBC.com) had large headlines proclaiming, “Eating less salt doesn’t cut heart risks.” However, MSNBC missed it here. The headline should have read, “Eating less salt increases your cardiovascular death rate over 5x as compared to those who eat a high salt diet.”

The human body was designed to crave and utilize salt. We have hundreds of grams of salt in our bodies at any one time. As I showed you above, eating a low salt diet does not decrease your risk for heart disease, it actually increases it—this has also been shown in many other studies. Furthermore, restricting salt to very low levels has almost no effect on blood pressure for the vast majority of people.

Finally, it is important to eat the right kind of salt—unrefined salt. Unrefined salt contains over 80 minerals that are essential to the human body. I have successfully used unrefined salt in my medical practice for nearly 20 years. Unrefined salt actually helps to lower blood pressure. More information about salt can be found in my book, Salt Your Way to Health.

What is the take home message? Use the right salt—unrefined salt. Examples of inexpensive, well-tested brands of unrefined salt include Celtic Brand Sea Salt and Redmonds Real Salt. I have Celtic Brand Sea Salt available at my office: www.centerforholisticmedicine.com.